Sift Logo Several blue dots forming a sphere to the left of the word Sift in italic font.
  • Products

    Digital Trust & Safety Suite

    Fight fraud without sacrificing growth

    Learn more →

    Passwordless
    Authentication

    Account
    Defense

    Content
    Integrity

    Payment
    Protection

    Dispute
    Management

    Sift
    Connect

    PSD2
    Solution

    New Releases & Enhancements

  • Partners

    Sift Partner
    Program

    Join the leader in Digital Trust & Safety

    Learn more →

    Commerce platform partners


  • Industries

    One solution, many applications

    Learn how Sift can work for your industry

    Learn more →

    Featured industries


    Fintech

    Retail

    Food & Beverage

  • Customers

    See case studies by industry

    Sift works across every use case and region

    Learn more →

    Featured customers


  • Resources

    Explore our resources

    Access trends, guides, and insights from Sift

    Learn more →

    Blog

    Ebooks

    One Pagers

    Demos

    Videos

    Webinars

    Infographics

    Podcasts

    Trust & Safety University

  • Fraud Center
  • Company

    Why leaders choose Sift

    Technology, community, and partnership

    Learn more →

    Our mission: Help everyone trust the internet


    About

    Careers

    News & Press

Request a demo
Products
  • Digital Trust & Safety Suite
  • Passwordless Authentication
  • Account Defense
  • Content Integrity
  • Payment Protection
  • Dispute Management
  • Sift Connect
  • PSD2 Solution
  • New Releases & Enchancements
Why Sift
  • Salesforce
  • Magento
  • Shopify
Industries
  • Fintech
  • Retail
  • Food & Beverage
Customers
Resources
  • Blog
  • Ebooks
  • One Pagers
  • Demos
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • Trust and Safety University
Fraud Center
About
  • Search Careers
  • Our Company
  • Contact Us
  • Engineering Blog
Request a DemoSign In
  • Blog Home
  • Digital Trust & Safety
  • Fraud
< prev / next >
Share this article on LinkedIn
Tweet this article
Share this article on Facebook
SOCIALICON
Share this article via email

Behind the Signal: Doral, FL

By Stephanie Yee  / 

24 Jul 2014

What’s up with Doral?
Let’s say you’re going through orders, and you come across one with a high order value where the billing and shipping addresses don’t match. You decide to do a bit of sleuthing, starting with research on the shipping city: Doral, FL.

At first glance, shipping to Doral seems like a no-brainer:

  • Incomes are high; the average household income is $87K
  • It’s the home of a 90-hole Golf Resort and Spa owned by the (Donald) Trump

Based on that information, it’d be perfectly reasonable to ship that order.

However, there’s also cause for caution. Sift Science has found that —  despite Doral’s wealth and status as member of the Trump empire — orders shipped there are 8X more risky than normal!

What Versus Why

At Sift, insights like these are discovered automatically, and often the signals are subtle and not immediately intuitive. After all, a computer can say “what”, but it takes a human being to say “why”.

For Doral specifically, I did ask “why”, and here’s what I found.

Doral’s land zoning looks like this:

Yes, Doral is home to not only 90 holes of golf, but also a lot of industrial land!

It has over 3K logistics-related companies and the Miami Free Zone, which offers 750K sq. ft. of duty-free warehouse space.  Its proximity to Miami International Airport (the #1 airport in international freight) and Port Miami (which moved 12.5B tons of cargo last year) means it has a thriving logistics industry.

Some of these warehouses offer package forwarding as a service. So, shipping to Doral is risky because that package has a higher likelihood of being forwarded to someplace else.

So what do you do?

Clearly, you shouldn’t blacklist Doral, since most of its inhabitants (population: 48K and growing) could be great customers. Similarly, you shouldn’t blacklist forwarding addresses since not all fraudsters use forwarding addresses and not all forwarding addresses ship to fraudsters.

Ultimately, shipping city is only one factor you should take into account when assessing fraud risk. It could be worth cancelling the order if there were other risky signals, such as how the email was typed in, what products — colors, sizes, etc. — make up the order, and shipping address.

At Sift, we have a proprietary database of over tens of thousands of known risky addresses.  However, the number of risky addresses is growing every day. As some addresses get blacklisted by larger retailers, package forwarding companies will change their warehouse locations. Plus, the freight industry itself has been under pressure, and package forwarding as a side-business could be a nice source of incremental profit.

While we’re not experts in package forwarding and freight, we are experts in identifying risk signals associated with this industry using machine learning. We track addresses and more to predict the likelihood of fraud. Follow us on Twitter to learn about more fraud signals or let us know about fraud signals you’ve investigated in the comments below. We’d love to hear them!

Related

Stephanie Yee

Stephanie Yee was a Director at Sift.

  • < prev
  • Blog Home
  • next >
Company
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • News & Press
  • Partner with us
  • Blog
Support
  • Help Center
  • Contact Support
  • System Status
  • Trust & Safety University
  • Fraud Management
Developers
  • Overview
  • APIs
  • Client Libraries
  • Integration Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Engineering Blog
Social

Don't miss a thing

Our newsletter delivers industry trends, insights, and more.

You're on the list.

You can unsubscribe at any time. Please see our Website Privacy Notice.

If you are using a screen reader and are having problems using this website, please email support@sift.com for assistance.

© 2022 Sift All Rights Reserved Privacy & Terms

Your information will be used to contact you about our service and subscribe you to our direct marketing communications. You can, of course, unsubscribe at any time. Please see our Website Privacy Notice.